It has just taken delivery of 588 IBM blade servers, each with two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors, in a deal which on list prices would be approaching $5 million.

I wonder if after one day folding you could take over hardocp or not. I personally think you could

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Rusty075 [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 12:04 am ]

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Well lets see, say each processor turns in 50 points per day. (Seems like a decent estimate for that speed, based on what others have reported)

Multiply 50 by 588 by 2 (since they're dualies), that gives you 58,800 points, per day. At that pace, if he started from zero points right now, he could overtake us in 4 days, 8 hours, and 15 minutes.

Wow.

For comparision [H]ardOCP would outrun him, they average better than 70,000 points per day.

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riffst3r [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 12:54 am ]

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you definitely have too much time on your hands... hehe. well, with his 58,800points/day, and our 5,000 odd, taking into consideration of all the farms Zhentar and the others have planned, we might have decent chance to reach #2 without any hiccups. then we'll just get peter to buy several more servers, and we'd knock [h] right over

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Rusty075 [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 12:58 am ]

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riff wrote:

you definitely have too much time on your hands... hehe.

Well being finally finished with school, and being un(der)employed, it leaves lots of free time to do silly math problems.

I think I need a hobby. (Or a job)

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AndrewC [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 8:04 am ]

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In the article they said that those were only additional servers. He already had twice that many. They gave a figure of around 2000 cpus. If they were all 2.8 Xeons at 50 points a day * 2000 = that's 100,000 points a day.

So all we have to do is get one of our forum people in NZ to go ask.

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Wrah [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 8:54 am ]

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I think it's even worse. My new (8)) barton 2800+ needs about 15 hours for a 53-pointer, so roughly it is able to do just over 80 points a day. The p4's are the same at the least, but can do even more if it gets the new core with sse2.
So I think it'll be more like 160000 points day.

Would it convince Peter if we all signed a petition?

In return we can offer him free advice on how to keep 2000 servers quiet.

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MikeC [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 9:40 am ]

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Free advice nothing! All this hard-earned expertise for free to a gazillionaire?! Along with folding on all the systems, we'll take nothing less than 100 xeon systems to silence the lot! 15 for SPCR, staff & contributors, 85 to be distributed via lottery.

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Zhentar [ Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:15 am ]

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a completely fair, and unbiased lottery conducted by Zhentar. emphasis on zhentar, err, I mean fair and unbiased.

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aristide1 [ Tue Jun 17, 2003 1:59 am ]

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Quote:

Multiply 50 by 588 by 2 (since they're dualies), that gives you 58,800 points, per day

I'd gladly accept all the heat next winter to keep my house toasty!

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aphonos [ Tue Jun 17, 2003 8:16 am ]

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Somebody really should email him and inquire about the idea. You'd hate for some other team to pick this up, send him and email and actually have him do it....for them

I would think if it were pitched to him as a cancer research project, he might be inclined to give up his idle processor time. (Can he deduct the time as a charitable contribution? Is Stanford a private, and therefore non-profit? Is this a ludicrous suggestion for someone in NZ?) Also include that putting our team number would be a nice gesture, since we petitioned him to be involved. This ought to be written by someone with more tact than I have. I think we should pick a rep and see if PJ will respond to one email before we all bombard him with requests. Rusty, you seem to have time on your hands.

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Rusty075 [ Tue Jun 17, 2003 9:23 am ]

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What, just because I owned a renderfarm I'm the official RenderFarm Pimp now?

Given the fact that these aren't just server boxes, they're render boxes, probably puts a nail in the idea of using them to fold. You don't go out and buy 588 machines unless you need 588 machines. That probably means that these things are going to have very little downtime at all, to maximize the return on investment. When renderboxes are rendering the idle drops almost entirely to zero. (that's the beauty of the render engines, they really maximize the cycles)

And besides that there are a couple of other problems:
1. He can't claim a tax deduct on a US university contribution while in NZ
2. Nobody can claim a tax deduction on Folding, no matter where you are. (since you can't prove what part of your electric bill went to it)
3. If he were going to do folding, say as aburn-in test for his network, he would start his own team for the publicity of it.

Sorry to rain on the parade

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aphonos [ Tue Jun 17, 2003 10:13 am ]

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Rusty075 wrote:

What, just because I owned a renderfarm I'm the official RenderFarm Pimp now?

No, I nominated you because you're unemployed (though looking for a job can be a full-time job in itself) and you brought up the PJ idea to begin with. Unless, of course you'd like to be known as RFP.

Rusty075 wrote:

That probably means that these things are going to have very little downtime at all, to maximize the return on investment. When renderboxes are rendering the idle drops almost entirely to zero. (that's the beauty of the render engines, they really maximize the cycles)

But the third movie will be done eventually.....and then what will Weta do with those boxes?

Rusty075 wrote:

3. If he were going to do folding, say as aburn-in test for his network, he would start his own team for the publicity of it.

Okay, one day for SPCR to bump us into the top 10 and then his own team.

Rusty075 wrote:

Sorry to rain on the parade

No parade rained on here--except maybe Zhentar not getting his lottery Xeon. I was just operating on the principle that you don't know until you ask.

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Zhentar [ Tue Jun 17, 2003 10:41 am ]

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Once the movie is done, they'll probably sell the power to companies that can't afford a renderfarm like that. I don't have THAT much lying around.

And don't worry about me not getting 85 xeons; it saves me the trouble of explaining to my room mate and my college why exactly I need to have a bunch of dual processor xeon blades in my room.

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Li7hium [ Sun Jul 06, 2003 7:02 pm ]

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Thanks for the tip guys, us over at Overclockers.com.au have been looking for a way to overtake the [H]orde!

Never would have come here if I wasn't checking out who my namesake was folding for!

Fold on!

Li7hium - folding as Lithium for Team #24

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Rusty075 [ Sun Jul 06, 2003 7:28 pm ]

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Glad we could help out. Hey, if you get him to start folding remember that we deserve a cut